Derived from the Greek word for change, "metabolism” is the process that maintains life. In continuous cycles of creation and destruction, metabolism transforms nutrients into energy and matter. Lauren Bon’s studio practice includes a team of individuals that work together across a range of investigative platforms, transforming resources into energy, actions and outcomes.

Ms. Bon is trained as an architect and is a practicing visual artist. Her Metabolic Studio creates "devices of wonder" that are specific to sites; investigating land and water use and positing new modalities in thinking and behavior. The Inter-Mountain West, stretching from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada is a terrain formed by the forces of water and fire over glacial time. It is our shared watershed that is the focus of the geographic scope of the Metabolic Studio’s work.

The Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio returns photography to its simplest technology, building its own tools and sourcing its own chemistry and even mining silver to produce emulsion. The Optics Division’s handmade processing and silver mining allude to the independent maker of images and the alchemy of silver and water and dust.

The Sonic Division of the Metabolic Studio uses sound as energy to remediate brownfields. Turning a silo on the edge of the Owens Dry Lake Bed into a musical instrument that plays itself—and reconnecting this industrial ruin with the city of Los Angeles, 240 miles away through sound. The Sonic Division plays, like sirens to ship wrecked sailors, weekly and filters that sound through the silos that sit on the lake 240 miles away.

News

Hammer Projects: Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio will feature an immersive sonic work,The Catch, 2015.On view at the Hammer March 7 through May 10. For more information click here.

Now on view After the Aqueduct at LACE through April 12, 2015.Click here for more information.

The Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional & Community Planning will host the 2015 Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) conference March 24-27. Keynote address by Lauren Bon, artist and founder, Metabolic Studio, The Intermountain West and Beyond,Wednesday, March 25, 2015, 9:00 am, K-State Alumni Center. Co-sponsored by Beach Museum of Art, Prairie Studies Initiative, Academic Excellence Fund, and KSU Department of Art.

Artist CutOne Hundred Mules Walking the Los Angeles Aqueduct World Premiere debuts Saturday, March 28 at 4:30 pm at the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs, CA.

The Metabolic Studio is Hosting 100 Conversations About Water During the Centenary of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Please join us for Conversation Number 95: Clean-up for The Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery Saturday March 28, 2015 at 8 am. Please RSVP to Gayle Creasman 714.639.8768

The Metabolic Studio is Hosting 100 Conversations About Water During the Centenary of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Please join us for Conversation Number 94: Bird Festival Lone Pine, April 24 & 25, 2015.

Metabolic Studio IOU Theatre presents MAN AGAINST THE MOUNTAIN (1947) radio play in Antelope Valley on April 26 at 2pm—location tba, please check back for more details.

Under Spring: Voices + Art + Los Angeles by Jeremy Rosenberg published by Heyday Press is now available. Order Here

Upcoming Exhibition! The Liminal Camera: Chicago May 15-August 10, 2015 at DePaul Art Museum. The Liminal Camera: Chicago will feature newly-commissioned photographs made in and around Chicago by Lauren Bon, Richard Nielsen, and Tristan Duke of the Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio.